One of the main reasons (if not THE main reason) for the lockdown of Virgin's TiVo is due to Virgin being a carrier of content - as such, they require content carriage rights and good relationships with content providers like Sky. TiVo don't have to worry about these issues for the Premiere which is sold at retail in the States, as Virgin's Nick Ontiveros (TV Strategy, Digital Entertainment) explained on the Help & Support Forums regarding the lack of multi-room streaming functionality:

It's not a question of the functionality on the software, it's the
product solution and the rights - which isn't a license disagreement,
it's a negotiation full stop.

For some CPs, these rights haven't existed before, and for others,
they've learned their lessons after what happened with Cablevision and
Comcast in the US last year. TiVo in the US gets to completely skirt the
whole rights issue altogether because they are an add-on product and
have no relationship with the content and carriage.

Multiscreen and particularly "multiroom" rights are evolving, and for
a lot of our content providers this is new territory. We are hard at
work to make big strides in the Entertainment Anywhere space, so it all
falls under the same negotiating umbrella.

Also, Virgin hate the idea of their customers have to use network cables hooked up to their TiVo for multi-room streaming, and they're testing a better way to achieve that goal:

And the product - people hate wires, we've found, and not a lot of
people have their TiVo right next door to their router. It's not going
to help our customers win any interior design awards if we've got CAT 5
running through the home. We're testing through a better way to do it,
so when we bring it to market it will be a finished product that
everyone can use if they want it.

Personally I think Homeplugs are a great alternative to running CAT 5 cables through the home, but Virgin appear to have other ideas and it will be interesting to see what (if anything) they come up with.

It’s the easiest thing in the world, because it runs in Flash to
publish all sorts of stuff to it, but that’s not consistent with the
TiVo environment, we want the Twitters and the Facebooks and the
iPlayers

Okkkayyyy, I hate to nitpick, but a Facebook app was described as 'Coming Soon' within Virgin's own YouTube video (uploaded in June last year) to promote forthcoming TiVo apps:

We’ve got it, it works. Ninety-nine percent of
companies would have rolled it by now - it’s stable, impressive - but we
haven’t…We wanted to make sure early adopter enthusiasts will love it - but
that, when it hits, it goes. mass-market quite quickly and is not viewed
as some flaky application for enthusiasts but is polished and doesn’t
generate calls to support. It shows you our philosophy - we’re a mass-market company.

There is a fundamental difference between what we’re trying to do
with TiVo and what a lot of other people around the industry are doing.
We are an open platform, we carry Spotify, we were iPlayer’s founder and
largest distributor, we’re Sky’s largest distributor for premium
content

Looking ahead, CEO Neil Berkett aims to have Virgin's entire TV Customer base (currently 3.8 million) on TiVo, "In five years time we’ll
retire Liberate, in five years time our customers will be exclusively on
TiVo, and I’m sure we’ll then be considering the son of TiVo”.

Earlier today, I was reading through the transcript of the conference call which followed the release of the latest financial results for Virgin Media, and I came across this quote from Virgin's Chief Executive, Neil Berkett:

You'll have seen that we've increased prices to existing customers by 5%
in April. We've also made the move to increase the price of TiVo for
all new TiVo subscribers from GBP 3 to GBP 5, which takes place
immediately. And in 12 months time, as current TiVo customers roll off their first 12-month contract, they will migrate from GBP 3 to GBP 5.

I can't say I was chuffed to read that, along with other customers. All of a sudden, YouView was looking more tempting as an alternative.

Hi I've spoken to the TiVo team about this and they've asked me to pass on the following about this.

Whilst we reserve the right to
review and change our prices to ensure we are able to continue to
deliver leading products and services, we can confirm that customers that already have TiVo, or take TiVo before 28th February, will stay at £3 per month per box, and will not see an increase at the end of their 12m contract; only customers adding a new TiVo box from 28th February will pay £5 per month per box.We're sorry for any confusion.

Customers like myself you got TiVoed for £3 per month per customer account should also not see any increase in the TiVo Service fee when their contracts expire (thanks to Digital Fanatic at Cable Forum).

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

A whiff of hope for Virgin Media customers hoping for a TiVo Netflix app was offered today, with Chief Executive Officer Neil Berkett stating that he wishes to add video streaming apps/services to Virgin's PVR such as Lovefilm and Netflix. However, its “early days” for any talks and Bloomberg reports that no announcements are imminent.

Berkett said that Virgin "want TiVo to be completely open, we’re talking to everyone." It should be noted that Virgin Media’s director of digital entertainment Cindy Rose said the same thing back in December 2010 when discussing content providers being apped-up for TiVo:

We’re talking to everybody...We’re very open to all of them. It’s just a
question of doing the right deal, making sure our customers actually
want it - power to the people; we’re a Virgin company ...If Lovefilm
came along and said ‘we’ve got something that adds to this’, we’d be the
first ones to embrace them - we’re not precious about that.

When it comes to combining TiVo and Netflix, it may be a case of wishful thinking for Virgin. In the U.S., Netflix's contracts with content providers prevent TiVo from adding the streaming service on boxes distributed by cable MSOs such as RCN Corp. , Suddenlink Communications and Charter Communications Inc.

So, while video streaming apps for Virgin Media's TiVo would be most welcome, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to appear. Besides, breathing is good for you.

Virgin Media's 4th Quarter Results for 2011 are in, and they are decent results too, with the cable company finally making a profit. As for TiVo, another 273,000 customers added the PVR to their package, which means that in total, 435,000 customers (12% of Virgin's TV Customer base) have obtained TiVo (not that they've had any choice since late September's 'retirement' of the legacy V+ HD PVR).

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Virgin Media Customer? Still haven't got TiVoed? Then you better get a move on because the prices for many of Virgin's services will increase from the start of April.

According to Virgin's web site, the M pack is going up to £7. The L pack increases to £19.50, while the XL pack increases to £26.50.

But what about the monthly TiVo charge? Well, for TiVos already ordered that will remain at an additional £3 per month. But from the end of February, any TiVo boxes ordered by new or existing customers will cost an additional £5 per month.

Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Scarlett Johansson was not happy to learn that the latest softwareupdate to TiVo disables network access for 3rd Party-Apps

Deployment of the latest software update for Virgin Media's TiVo is underway, both my 1TB and 500Gb boxes were updated overnight to Version 15.2.01-2-C00. Virgin have revealed some more details about the update on their Help & Support Forums, which is host to plenty of unhappy feedback regarding the removal of network access for 3rd-Party Apps:

As a number of you have noticed, we’re currently piloting our final bug fixing patch to our 15.2 software.

This software includes a number of changes, including improvements to
YouTube performance, gearing up for the launch of new red button
services and stability improvements.

One change that has raised some questions from some of our pilot
users is a change to the way in which TiVo communicates with companion
applications.

We built the TiVo service with two sets of APIs for integrating with
other devices, one for our use and one for use by third party
applications.

Without being able to go into extensive detail, due to the unique way
we have integrated TiVo, there are capabilities of the VM API that
could, if misused, affect the stability and security of our TiVo
service. In order to keep our system secure, we have disabled the use of
some of the APIs to eliminate this risk.

We realise this means that anyone using certain non-Virgin Media
companion apps will no longer be able do so, however as you will be
aware we are working on our own official companion apps for TiVo. We’re
spending a lot of time right now making sure these will give customers a
fantastic experience and hope to have more news about them soon.

We appreciate that this might not be what some of you wanted to hear
but we’d rather be upfront about the need to disable this feature for
the time being.

The waiting continues for Virgin to release those official apps, for both fans of Apple and Android mobile tablets.